A dull-looking chart projected on the wall of a university office in Jerusalem displayed a revelation that would startle many readers of the Old Testament: the sacred text that people revered in the past was not the same one we study today.

An ancient version of one book has an extra phrase. Another appears to have been revised to retroactively insert a prophecy after the events happened.

President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a decree toughening sanctions on Libya five months after the measure was passed by the U.N. Security Council in March, the Kremlin said Friday.

It was not immediately clear why Medvedev signed the decree implementing the sanctions so long after Resolution 1973 was passed.

France on Thursday said it had summoned the Ukrainian ambassador in Paris to express its "serious concern" over the arrest of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The envoy was told that France would continue to follow very closely the developments in the case that saw Tymoshenko's arrest on Friday for contempt of court in her abuse of power trial, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said.

Religious-linked violence and abuse rose around the world between 2006 and 2009, with Christians and Muslims the most common targets, according to a private U.S. study released Tuesday.

"Over the three-year period studied, incidents of either government or social harassment were reported against Christians in 130 countries (66 percent) and against Muslims in 117 countries (59 percent)," said the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life study.

Russian authorities fired a prison governor Tuesday after scandalous photographs revealed prisoners holding a toga party with caviar and even taking a delivery of McDonald's takeaway.

The governor of Prison Number 3 in the town of Serpukhov outside Moscow and two of his deputies were fired after an investigation found "blatant breaches" at the jail, the prosecutor-general's office said Tuesday.

Russia on Tuesday reaffirmed its call for an end to violence and the launch of deep-rooted political reforms in Syria, during a phone call between the two countries' foreign ministers.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem that Moscow wanted to see the launch of "a broad Syrian dialogue" that could help the country find its own way out of the crisis, a Russian statement said.

A Russian cargo plane crashed on Tuesday in the remote Far East after reporting engine trouble and disappearing off radars, apparently killing all 11 on board in the latest in a spate of air accidents.

Transport prosecutors said in a statement that the ageing Soviet jet came down in a hard-to-reach area of the Magadan region, hundreds of kilometers even from the nearest village.

A Soviet-made plane carrying 36 passengers Monday overshot the runway and lost one wing in an emergency landing in Russia's Far East, injuring 15 people.

The An-24 passenger plane, en route to Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, had to land in Blagoveschensk after it "deviated from the planned itinerary due to poor visibility and strong gusts of wind," the emergencies ministry said in a statement.

A Russian team is visiting Lebanon in an attempt to sign contracts with Lebanese authorities to have oil exploration rights in Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone, media reports said Saturday.

As Safir daily reported that the delegation was carrying a message from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to his Lebanese counterpart.

The U.S., French and German leaders pledged to consider new steps to punish Syria after security forces shot dead at least 24 people as tens of thousands staged anti-regime protests on the first Friday of Ramadan.

President Barack Obama spoke separately to France's Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Western nations cranked up pressure on Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.